


A Peaceful Future

by Romiress



Category: Monster (Manga), 亜人 - 三浦追儺 & 桜井画門 | Ajin - Miura Tsuina & Sakurai Gamon
Genre: Canon is respectfully ignored in terms of timeline, Crossover, Gen, M/M, Suicide Attempt, This is short and self indulgent, what can i say
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-06
Updated: 2017-03-05
Packaged: 2018-09-28 15:23:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10127864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Romiress/pseuds/Romiress
Summary: A quick post-monster AU where it's actually taking place in the same universe as Ajin.Heavily deviates from the ending of Monster in an obvious (and spoilery) manner.





	1. Chapter 1

He isn’t a spy, he tells himself for the thousandth time. He’s not a spy anymore, and there’s no reason for him to be doing what he’s doing.

He should turn around and go right back to the city. He should leave an anonymous tip about what he found and keep his nose out of it.

Grimmer keeps walking anyway.

The entire base seems empty--it looks increasingly unlikely that anyone has been there for years. The dust’s thick, and he’s well aware he’s going to have to obliterate his tracks on the way out.

He pulls his shirt up over his mouth as he goes to keep the worst of the dust out, rifling through office after office. In several he finds piles of ash and scorch marks, signs that something _did_  exist he might have been interested in, but also that it’s all gone.

The base wasn’t abandoned in a hurry, that much is certain.

He readjusts his bag on his shoulder as he checks the next office, surprised to find that it isn’t an office at all--it’s a lab. There’s the fainted smell of copper that meant _old blood._

It brings back all the wrong memories, and Grimmer lingers in the door, trying to convince himself that it isn’t the same.

He doesn’t notice the figure right away, and when he does his first thought is _body_. There’s a man on a chair, his body wrapped in thick white bandages, his head lolled forward.

His second thought is _doll_.

It can’t be a body. The dust’s still thick in the room--so thick that the man’s black hair looks ever so slightly grey--and there’s no smell of rot. The body is as pristine as it would have been in life, which means it’s absolutely synthetic, some kind of dummy or mannequin. It’s certainly out of place--unusual, really--but it’s not nearly as surprising as finding a body.

He checks the filing cabinet, rifling through what remains--very little--and accepts that the odds of him finding anything are low. It’s all been cleaned out, everything destroyed, and he wonders why they even bothered sealing the entrance. There was nothing _to_  hide, so why go through the effort?

It’s not likely to be connected to the department of internal affairs anyway.

A sudden noise makes him spin, and to his surprise Grimmer finds that the doll--body, apparently--has moved.

It’s staring at him, its eyes open, head straight.

He’s forced to reassess, reclassifying the thing--body--as a person. He’s Asian--similar looking enough to Kenzo--but younger, maybe in his mid or late twenties.

But that’s as far as Grimmer can make his brain go. There’s no explanation, no logic that fits. The man is _covered_  in dust, silent and staring, and if he didn’t know for _sure_  that such things didn’t exist, he’d have assumed he was a robot.

There’s no way for him to be there. No way he could have gotten in, no way he could have lived, and no way he could have been left behind. He’d be long dead, and the facilities been abandoned for years.

Grimmer’s brain ticks away, but he continues to come up blank.

 _What would Kenzo do?_  He thinks to himself instead, desperate for another way to look at the problem.

“Hello,” he says, watching for a response. When he doesn’t get one, he tries again, swapping to English and then French.

The doll--man, he reminds himself--finally responds, saying something so quietly it’s barely audible. He’s been around Kenzo long enough to recognize Japanese, but _Japanese_  isn’t one of the languages he’s studied, and he’s at a loss for what’s being said.

At the very least it provides an option, a way out. If he can talk, he can explain, and Grimmer simply needs an interpreter.

“I’ll be back,” he says, heading towards the door, and the man in the chair lets out a pained wail. It means nothing to him, but when he stops at the door he tries again to figure out what Kenzo would do.

Kenzo would bring him with him. He wouldn’t leave him there and return later.

He doubles back, approaching the chair, ever wary for danger, but he finds none. The man can’t move beyond his head, and he looks terrified and distressed, tears pouring down his face as he sobs.

The emotion is clear enough: He doesn’t want to be left alone.

“Alright,” Grimmer says, trying his best to sound soothing. It’s easy enough--he just mimics Kenzo--and he bends down as he does. “I’m going to take you with me.”

The man probably doesn’t understand--the crying doesn’t stop--but that doesn’t prevent Grimmer from picking him up, slinging him over his shoulder. He’s big--really big--but Grimmer can handle it, spreading the man’s weight over his shoulders.

“Just sit still,” he says, shifting his grip as he heads back towards the door.

He’s going to have to come back and clean up his tracks later, but he doubts Tenma will mind.


	2. Chapter 2

It isn’t hard to find a payphone, but it _is_  hard to find a way to position the man so that he can see him but so that no one else can. He settles for leaving him lying in the back seat, calling Kenzo in hopes of minimizing the surprise.

“Hello?” Kenzo says when he picks up, and Grimmer keeps his eyes glued to the car for the duration of the conversation.

“It’s Grimmer,” he says, trying to keep it short. “Remember when you told me I shouldn’t go snooping around without you, and that if I was going to investigate something, I should tell you?”

There’s silent on the other line, and Grimmer amuses himself imagining Kenzo’s face. Angry, probably. No, not angry--he’d be angry, but Kenzo wouldn’t. He’d be worried.

“Are you alright?” Kenzo asks when he composes himself, and Grimmer congratulates himself for getting it right.

“Fine,” he confirms. “I wasn’t harmed. I’m bringing someone home, I’ll be back in thirty minutes.”

“You’re bringing someone back?” Kenzo says, the disbelief in his voice audible. “Is everything alright?”

“Yes,” Grimmer confirms. “It’s not any danger. I just need you to talk to someone.”

“You need _me_  to talk to someone?” Kenzo says.

“He doesn’t speak German. Or English, or anything else I tried. I think he’s speaking in Japanese.”

He can perfectly picture the look on Kenzo’s face--his eyebrows squished together, a look of deep concentration. He’s seen it so many times he’s burned it into his memory.

“You could just put them on the phone. Is this someone you’re helping?”

Grimmer can’t decide the answer to that. He doesn’t know if he’s helping or hurting, but _something_  is going on. He’d thought the base was connected to the interior ministry, and while he’d dismissed the possibility, he can’t help but wonder if he wasn’t right the first time around.

“That would probably end badly. I’ll be home in thirty minutes,” he says, leaving Kenzo to wonder as he says his quick goodbyes.

The man is still lying in the back seat when he climbs in, staring up at the ceiling. He’s stopped crying, at least, but he’s almost entirely non-responsive. There’s something _wrong_  with him in a way that’s all too familiar, and Grimmer simply refuses to think about it on the drive home.

There’s too many questions.

* * *

 

Kenzo’s waiting at the door when Grimmer arrives, and he gives him a brief wave before opening the back door. The street is empty, and Grimmer makes a point of going quickly, slinging the man over his shoulder as he ducks into the hotel.

“You said it was for work,” Kenzo says, his face dark and angry. It takes him a few seconds to register though, and then his face changes--suddenly he looks _horrified_  and _concerned_ , the anger gone in an instant.

“Is that a body?”

“It’s a person,” Grimmer establishes. “He’s alive, even if he shouldn’t be.”

“He’s hurt?” Kenzo asks, and almost instantly he’s slid into doctor mode, helping Grimmer lie him down on the bed as he checks the non-responsive man’s pulse.

“He was in a sealed bunker like this. It’s been sealed for at least a few years, there was no sign of movement, and I have no idea how he’s alive. He should have starved years ago.” The entire thing is a locked room puzzle, a mystery with no obvious solution.

Kenzo signals for Grimmer to grab his med kit, and Grimmer does, handing it over without complaint.

“And?” Kenzo says as he shines a penlight into the man’s eyes, watching his pupils dilate.

“And nothing. I have no more information then what I just told you. He said something--I thought it was Japanese--but only once. Then he cried a bit and went silent.”

Kenzo’s frown deepens, and he checks the man’s pulse again.

“I need to go clean up,” Grimmer says. “I’ll be gone at least an hour. He shouldn’t be able to move.”

Kenzo’s safety is his first priority, but he knows that Kenzo doesn’t always feel the same way. “Don’t untie him.”

“I don’t think he’s a danger,” Kenzo replies, not looking back at him. “He’s non responsive, but physically well.”

“Don’t untie him,” Grimmer repeats. “Until I get back. Promise.”

He can tell Kenzo’s thinking about fighting him--his shoulders go up ever so slightly--but he doesn’t.

“Alright,” he says. “Come back soon. Don’t do anything foolish.”

Grimmer promises he will, and it’s an easy promise. He never _does_  do anything foolish.

Except, perhaps, going alone to a sealed base looking for trouble.


	3. Chapter 3

It feels easy for him to be a _doctor_ , but before long there’s simply nothing else to do. The man before him is healthy. His pulse is normal, his breathing is normal. If not for his silence, Tenma would have said he was the very picture of health, but the fact remains that he’s done nothing but stare at the ceiling since he arrived.

Despite Grimmer’s insistence that he spoke, there’s been no sign of _any_ communication. He doesn’t like to doubt Grimmer, but he can’t help but wonder if he was hearing things.

Eventually, there’s simply nothing else to do, so he returns to his book, settling in at the table. The hotel isn’t anything fancy--he prefers cheap when he can get it, used to a life on the run--but the chairs are comfortable enough, and it’s easy to get lost in his reading.

Grimmer returns almost two hours later, looking no worse for the wear beyond looking a bit dusty.

“How are things?” He asks after he gets his shoes off.

“He hasn’t done anything since you left, so they’re just the same,” Tenma points out, glancing back towards the figure on the bed.

He’s still perfectly quiet, unmoving.

“I couldn’t find anything,” Grimmer says. “I double checked all the filing cabinets. Nothing useful. Barely even anything that _wasn’t_  useful. They cleaned the place out.”

“So what do we _know_?” Tenma asks, glancing back to Grimmer. He’s still smiling, right up until he realizes Tenma’s looking at him, and then his expression instead becomes one of concentration.

Old habits die hard, Tenma supposes.

“Nothing,” Grimmer says with a shrug. “We know nothing. We know he was found in the base, and that the base _might_ have had a connection to the ministry of the interior. I _think_  he might have been there for years, but that doesn’t make any sense. He couldn’t have survived. At the same time, He can’t have gotten in either--I double checked, and there’s no way in or out except by the entrance I broke open.”

Tenma believes him. Grimmer’s good at things like that, even if he’d never brag.

“So what now?” Tenma says, his eyes sliding right back over to the man on the bed. He’s simultaneously a familiar face and an unfamiliar one. Even if he’s never met the man before in his life, he’s almost entirely sure that he’s Japanese, and watching him rest gives Tenma a strange sort of nostalgia for his hometown.

“Have you tried talking to him in Japanese?” Grimmer asks, settling in on the chair opposite of Tenma.

Tenma has to admit that he hasn’t--and that he didn’t even think about it. He slides over to the bed, sitting on the edge and looking down at the man on the bed.

“Hello,” he says, slipping into Japanese for the first time in years. It’s his mother tongue, but even so it feels strange and clunky to him, like dusting off an old machine and having to test to see if it works. “My name is Tenma. The man over there is Grimmer.”

Grimmer’s name doesn’t play nice with Japanese, but he tries anyway.

For a moment, he assumes there’s no response at all, and then he realizes that the man’s face has turned towards him ever so slightly. There are tears in his eyes, even if they haven’t started falling yet, but even so he doesn’t respond.

Tenma takes it as the encouragement it is.

“I don’t know what happened to you, or how you got there. But you’re safe here now.”

He’s thankful for all those classes on bedside manner, because it makes it easy to comfort someone who is almost entirely non-responsive. It’s like talking to a coma patient, only the coma patient has ever so slightly tilted their head to look at him.

He keeps talking, eager for those little signs of encouragement.

“I’m a doctor, but right now I’m not working at any one particular position. I’m helping out here and there where I can, and travelling the rest of the time. Grimmer’s a...” He has to pause, struggling to figure out what word could possibly describe Grimmer’s occupation. “Journalist,” he finishes.

The response is minimal, but there _is_  a response. The man’s eyes are focused slightly, and it’s obvious that he’s actually _looking_  at the two of them since the first time they entered the room.

“We’re travelling around,” Tenma continued. “Looking into things. Putting the pieces together. I guess you’re one of those pieces, although it’s hard to know for sure. There are so many things that happened while the wall was up, and so many of them shouldn’t have ever happened. So we’re trying to find them all and put things back together, if we can.

“Grimmer’s good at it, I’m really just along for the ride,” he added with a conspiratorial tone.

It’s enough, and the man on the bed speaks for the first time. His voice is soft, so quiet that Tenma doubts Grimmer can even hear, but his Japanese is clear and obviously native.

“You aren’t with them?”

“I’m not with them,” Tenma says carefully. “I couldn’t even tell you who _them_  is. The only person I’m with is Grimmer, and he’s not with anyone but me. We’re not part of any other group.”

The doubt is obvious on his face, but even so he nods ever so carefully.

“You aren’t taking me back?”

“Not to the lab, no. Not to... to wherever you’re afraid of going. We’ll help you, if you’ll let us, whatever that entails.”

The man begins to cry again, but it’s a different sort of crying. The tears are relief, not fear, and Tenma reaches out, resting a hand on the man’s own.

“It’ll be alright.”


	4. Chapter 4

It takes time--days, really--before the nameless man opens up. Little things set him off, and several times without warning he bursts into tears. Grimmer insists on keeping him inside as much as possible, and it’s a real relief when they catch the train to the next town.

The farther they are from the lab, the easier things are.

He says that his name is Kouji, but he refuses to give a family name. He’s evasive about what happened, and it’s not until weeks later that Grimmer manages to pry it out of him.

 Even unable to speak a single word of Japanese, Grimmer’s still better at getting information out of him.

The explanation they get, however, doesn’t help all that much. It’s so bizarre and unrealistic--that Kouji can’t die--that Tenma doesn’t believe him at first.

It doesn’t last for long. Kouji’s obviously desperate to prove he isn’t lying, because before Tenma can react properly he’s stabbed a knife through his own neck. Grimmer’s faster, catching Kouji’s wrist, but it’s already too late, the damage done.

No amount of medical attention will stop him from bleeding out, but Tenma tries anyway.

Thirty seconds after Kouji’s heart ceases to beat, his entire body jerks, the injury sealing itself up as if by magic. Grimmer jerks backwards, and Tenma follows suit, equal parts shocked and horrified.

After that he doesn’t question Kouji’s claims.

The story comes out, piece by piece. He died in Japan and was taken abroad in secret. He was experimented on. Tests were performed. Tenma watches Grimmer’s reactions closely, but there’s nothing to see--Grimmer’s even more non responsive then he usually is.

They travel again, and Kouji goes with them.

Grimmer appears one evening with an ID. It says _Kouji Tenma_  and has a little picture of Kouji on it. Tenma has no idea when he took the picture, and Kouji obviously doesn’t either.

“It’ll be easier to travel if they think that you’re related,” Grimmer explains. “Two Japanese men would draw attention, otherwise. The ID doesn’t specify, but I was thinking he’s your younger cousin.”

The reasoning is sound, and Kouji doesn’t argue. He stares down at the ID like it’s a real gift, and Tenma decides he’ll ask Grimmer where he got it _later_.

“If you want,” Tenma points out. “We could always travel back to Japan. My parents have been bothering me to visit for years, but I’ve always put it off.”

“No,” Kouji blurts out immediately. “If I go back, then... I’m supposed to be dead.”

His fear is obvious, and Tenma drops the subject.

As they travel, Kouji picks up more German, bits and pieces as he goes. More then that, _Grimmer_  picks up Japanese. He’s conversational in a month, even if his accent is thick, and every day he gets better.

Sometimes, as they travel, Tenma catches him staring at Kouji when he thinks the younger man isn’t looking.

He knows--well, guesses really--what is it that Grimmer’s thinking, but he doesn’t bring it up. Instead he reaches over, taking Grimmer’s hand in his own and giving it a squeeze to bring him back to the present.

As they travel, Tenma becomes increasingly aware that Grimmer is no longer looking just for information on what happened to himself. His scope has expanded, and the questions he asks leave room for Kouji as well. Kouji doesn’t ask anything--his German isn’t quite up to par--but sometimes at night he can hear them talking about things.

Kouji’s found someone who will protect him, but at the same time Grimmer has found someone who _understands_.

“He should stay with us,” Grimmer says one evening before dinner. Kouji’s out picking up some food, and for the first time in ages it’s just the two of them.

Tenma can’t deny he’s been thinking it, but he’s surprised that Grimmer’s the one to bring it up.

“Oh?” He says, curious to see what Grimmer will say.

“He isn’t going to go back to Japan,” Grimmer points out as he sets the table. “And he has no one else here.”

“And you like him,” Tenma counters.

“And I like him,” Grimmer concedes. “As do you. He gets along with both of us.”

“I have no complaints,” Tenma points out. “I think he’d do better staying with us as well. You two have an... understanding, I guess.”

He’s not sure that’s the right word, but Grimmer doesn’t argue.

“Are you really okay with it?” He asks instead, and Tenma glances up, squinting at him. He can’t figure out what Grimmer’s getting at.

“What?”

Grimmer takes a moment to rephrase.

“I know he’s... difficult, at times,” Grimmer starts. “If he sleeps the whole night through without waking up screaming, it’s a good night...”

Tenma suddenly understands. He can see where the conversation is going, and he can see what Grimmer _really means_ , even if he’s not saying it.

He means _I know I can be difficult, at times_.

“He’s been through a lot,” Tenma says, navigating the conversation as carefully as he can. “And so have you. I think he should stay with us too, although I think he’ll probably end up crying if we tell him that.”

Grimmer doesn’t look like _he’s_  going to cry, but he certainly does look affected by the entire conversation. His face looks pinched and largely devoid of emotion.

“I don’t know how I should react to this,” Grimmer finally admits.

“Be happy,” Tenma says with a small laugh. “Because we both agree. Because everything worked out. We can’t undo what happened to him, but we can at least give him a future.”

Grimmer smiles, and Tenma knows he means it.


End file.
